Fifth Circuit decision on voter ID couldn’t have happened to a nicer state

Published 5:49 pm, Sunday, July 24, 2016

Norma doesn’t want to vote this November. She feels elected officials haven’t acted on her behalf, and that her vote doesn’t really count.

“They still do what they want to do,” she says. Some actually do nothing at all.

Norma — that’s not her real name — isn’t unpatriotic or anti-government, but from her bleacher seat the whole process stinks and it’s hard to argue with that view. She seems as uneasy about voting as she is about learning to drive.

So, there are already obstacles someone like Norma must overcome to get to the voting booth. Texas’ voter identification law installed more institutional hurdles.

Political scientist Henry Flores of St. Mary’s University says voting research shows Norma’s reluctance boils down to a distrust of institutions. For minorities, the distrust is “very real.”

For those of you ready to pounce on Norma for lacking civic virtue or ignoring a moral obligation, it’s important to know she’s a hard-working blue-collar Latina who cared for my late mother until her death. She’s trusted and loved.

Her story exemplifies the challenges democracy faces to rise to its potential. So the voter ID decision handed to Texas last week by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit couldn’t have happened to a nicer state.

The Fifth Circuit didn’t strike down the law, considered the nation’s most restrictive, but found it violates the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against Latino, African American and other voters.

The Fifth Circuit sent the case to a lower court to find a fix, quickly. Election Day is Nov. 8. It also asked the court to re-examine whether Texas showed intent to discriminate against such voters.

Lydia Camarillo, vice president of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, says there are a lot of potential remedies. Texas could make an ID easier to get; or allow student IDs, for example, to satisfy the law. Driver’s licenses and gun permits are allowed. Why not student IDs?

Camarillo would prefer Texas simply pick up where it was before the Legislature passed and Gov. Rick Perry signed the law.

“We could go back to using the voter registration card,” she said.

She said the Help America Vote Act, passed after the Gore-Bush, hanging-chads debacle, includes utility bills that reflect your name and address as acceptable forms of ID.

Texas can go a step farther and institute “super precincts” on Election Day. They’re essentially those used during early voting, so that voters can cast ballots regardless of where they live in the county.

“There’s already a precedent,” she says.

In the matter of intent to discriminate, there seems to be no question. Texas knew what it was doing. Former Gov. Rick Perry knew what he was doing. Then-Attorney General Greg Abbott knew what he was doing, too. He spent more than $1 million trying to find evidence of voter fraud, which presumably was the reason for the law.

Attorney General Ken Paxton, by the way, has spent more than $3.5 million defending the law in court.

Fraud was, of course, nowhere to be found. “It was ludicrous,” Camarillo says.

Republicans have used the same argument in other states. The reality is the United States rates embarrassingly low on voter turnout.

Texas’ intent in the voter ID law was as clear as it was in redistricting, another issue that remains in courts. The goal was voter suppression, even though Texas had gained additional seats in Congress because of Latino population growth.

That Texas feigned concern about voter fraud is what makes people like Norma distrust elected officials. The real fraud was that the law was the alleged solution to a non-existent problem.

Camarillo’s family in California has a lovely election-time tradition. Because that state allows balloting by mail, the family gets together over enchiladas, talks politics, fills out ballots and mails them.

“The Camarillos are perfect voters,” she says.

That might make it easier to get Norma to vote, though in Texas you have to be 65 or prove you’ll be out of town to get a mailed ballot.

So, this fall we’ll make sure Norma is registered to vote. The deadline is Oct. 11. We’ll vote early, which starts Oct. 24, which will allow us to vote together.

We’ll tell her it won’t take more than a few minutes; and that the voting machine is no harder to operate than her phone.

We’ll tell her it’s like the first time she opened a bank account or used her ATM card. Once done, you know how to do it.